


Five People Who Could Never Escape Gotham (and the One that Got Away)

by Pitry



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-15
Updated: 2013-01-15
Packaged: 2017-11-25 14:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/639934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitry/pseuds/Pitry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I see a beautiful city, and the brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life peaceful, prosperous and happy.” (A Tale of Two Cities)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Five minutes after the bomb went off, the National Guard went in. Five minutes after that, the riots started.

The flames were visible already from the bridge, where Ramirez sat with the rest of her unit. Then the order came in - the south tunnel was open. She stared at the flames - downtown, unless she was completely mistaken, and West Fifth. Not far from the old MCU building. She threw her cigarette on the road, still half unsmoked.

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” Jackson, her CO, barked, and they were on their feet, into the vehicles, and heading south.

The entry, of course, wasn’t as smooth as Jackson had predicted. “Smooth sailing,” he had said, all the way to the tunnel. “We’ll just go in there and get the bastards.” But nothing was ever smooth in Gotham City. 

Fuck. Gotham City. The one place she thought she’d never see again. Maybe this was her punishment - coming back. 

She shook her head. Fuck this shit, she thought defiantly. She deserved no punishment, and especially not _this_. 

The south tunnel was completely jammed. The state police already set up the blockades, to stop anyone from leaving the city, but it didn’t stop what looked like the entire population of the city, all 12 million people, from getting in their cars and trying to get away. “Get back in your cars,” she could hear the state police calling - unsuccessfully, of course, as this was Gotham - with their loudpseakers. “Get back to your homes.” As if.

She jumped out of the truck, rifle in hand, and started shouting at the people who ignored the police and tried to leave their cars. “Get back in! Get the fuck back! You are obstructing the police!” The rest of her unit soon started following her lead, jumping off the truck and pushing the people back inside, back into the city. They needed both lanes to get in properly, and that entire bottleneck wasn’t doing anyone any favours - and besides, who knew how many of _them_ were trying to hide as citizens here? 

These were their orders. No one leaves. Not until they identified all of Bane’s terrorists. Jackson made it absolutely clear. Better dead innocent citizens than free bad guys.

It was Ramirez who had laughed during that part of the briefing. 

“Something funny, Ramirez?” he had asked.

“I was born in Gotham, Sir, lived there most of my life,” she had answered shortly. “There’s no such thing as innocent citizens there.”

Ramirez cocked her rifle and aimed it directly at the man in front of her, the bastard who refused to get inside his car. “Get in, right now, or I will shoot you!” she shouted. 

Perhaps he recognised her. Perhaps he just recognised the look in her eyes. Whatever it was, he stopped arguing and walked back inside. The rest of them followed. 

It took them another three hours before the line of cars shrank and the lane cleared. By the time they got back into the truck and exited the tunnel, half the city was in flames. 

Good, Ramirez thought savagely when she recognised the old opera house at the centre of the fires. Let the whole place burn. The only way to get rid of the filth.

“Ramirez!” Jackson shouted, and she finally tore her eyes from the opera house and turned back to the briefing. “Yes, sir.”

“Get your people to the docks and make your way into the city from there. You’ll meet Marks’ force around halfway though, they’re starting on the financial district. No one - and I repeat, _no one_ \- is to enter Old Town before we clean up the rest. Move.”

She moved. Better move than keep on looking at Jackson, she thought - or keep on looking at the man next to him. He was a civilian, walking back and forth, an anxious look on his face. She knew the man, of course - Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne butler. How on earth did he end up with them, she didn’t know, but she hated the way he looked at her, that piercing gaze, as if he was weighing in her guilt - as if she had something to do with this sorry mess. She didn’t. She had left Gotham. Why did Pennyworth want to come back was a mystery to her. 

The docks didn’t look at all like they did eight years ago. There were no ships there, no shuttles. Bane made sure of that. It was almost as if in the five months since he took over a rot had taken over the place. It was absolutely quiet.

But Anna Ramirez new better. ‘Absolutely quiet’ was a misleading sentiment in Gotham. Anything could lurk in the shadows. Bane’s men, looking for a way off the city. Citizens. Rioters. Fucking Gotham. But the docks were absolutely quiet. The riots hadn’t made it there yet. Out here, they couldn’t hear the shouts and screams, couldn’t see the flames, not even the old opera house, just big old industrial buildings and fifty years old apartment buildings, on the brink of collapse. And as always, above it all, Wayne Tower ruled, oddly undisturbed by the rest of the city. 

“Ramirez!” She heard the urgent whisper. Davidson - he only finished his training two months ago, she thought darkly. Doesn’t he regret joining in now.

“What?”

“I think I saw - there was movement there.”

She immediately aimed her rifle and her flashlight at the building. She couldn’t see anything. Could be the shadows... could be something else. “Get Michaels and Ashton. Let’s check it out,” she whispered. 

They kicked down the door in three seconds. It was one of those warehouses - where heavy machinery provided a thousand different hiding places, where the different rooms were like a maze. It could be a trap, she knew. It was the perfect place for a trap. She should have brought more people.

But room after room, machine after machine, and there was no sign of movement, no sign of life. They went from a room full of crates - all open, all empty, all untouched - to a huge conveyor belt that hadn’t moved in months. Smaller labs, more crates, nothing. Not a whisper, not a noise, no movement. Maybe it really was the shadows, she thought and turned around. Time to call this off.

“Shit,” Michaels said all of a sudden and she tensed again. 

“What?”

He pointed at the floor - and now she saw it. A pool of blood, at the centre of an even larger pool - salt water. Sea water. Something came up here from the sea. She touched the blood gingerly with her finger. Still warm. 

But there were no foot prints. No sign of the source of the blood. And there was so much blood there - whoever it was, they were severely injured. Shouldn’t be too hard to find them, and yet... and yet, there was no sign of them around. None at all. She called back-up now. With the freaks of Gotham, one could never be too careful. 

Another half hour, and she was forced to admit defeat. Whatever it was, it was no longer there. The warehouse was completely empty. The only thing they had found was a small, torn piece of black fabric, with a texture like she had never seen before. Soft and hard at the same time, she thought when she felt it with her hand - and soaked with water. But that was it. Fabric and blood and water.

“We’re wasting our time,” she said. “Let’s continue to the financial district, they’ll wonder where we are.”

The way to the rendezvous point in the financial district was through block after block of the dockland apartments. They searched each and every one. Some of them pretended to be sleeping, some of the parents put their children on parade, as if to say, Look, we’re innocent, we’ve got children! The junkies just looked at them apathetically as they searched through apartment after apartment, building after building. 

She wasn’t buying any of that. Not the terrified looks, not the screams, not the children crying nor their parents begging. She wasn’t even buying the junkies’ apathy. She _knew_ Gotham. By now, everyone had heard what had happened here. Revolution, they called it. Uprising. Let the people of Gotham take what was theirs. 

“How many of these things did you steal, huh? How many?” she shouted at a beefy man with small, beady eyes. “No, shut up! Shut up and get inside! I said get - and what’s this then, huh?” she noticed all of a sudden the small handgun on the table. “What’s that? You were going to shoot us, were you? Defending your home, my ass. Michaels! Arrest these fuckers, put them on the truck, all of them, move!” She waved her rifle to silence the woman’s incessant wailing about how young her son was - she grew up in this damn city, nine year olds were practically gangsters here - and moved on to the next apartment, where the same thing happened all over again. 

By the time they reached the financial district, the truck was full of ‘families’ - they would have to check how many of these were real families, how many were pretending - and the flames had almost reached the dockland neighbourhoods. 

She could hear them before she saw them. They were marching down the street, shouting, shattering glass - at least, those glasses that had not been shattered by the heat and flames - and waving their guns around. _Bane’s men_ , was her first instinct. And they were advancing towards them. “Open fire!” she ordered her men. No one in her unit was going to lose their lives because of the scum.

She could see by the way they halted, by the way they dispersed - disorganised, frightened, _untrained_. They weren’t Bane’s men, they were just people from Gotham. _Innocent civilians_ , she snorted, and ordered her men to keep on shooting towards the main group, those who didn’t run away or hide away. Far ahead, she could hear Marks’ force advancing, closing in the trap. Once they neutralised all of the dangerous elements, they would arrest the rest. 

It took them another half hour, but in the end, there was a respectable group of people in cuffs, blindfolded with their own shirts, lying with their faces down on the road. The bodies were on the other side. There was no room for either group in the trucks, and they hadn’t yet taken over a building that could serve as a temporary prison. She lighted a cigarette, kicked one of the bound men on the ground, smiled at his yelp. Yeah, fourteen, fifteen, she estimated. Well, Sunshine, don’t jump in the fire if you can’t stand the heat. She kicked the man again, just for good measure. Michaels smirked next to her, lighted his own cigarette. 

“Ramirez!” They turned around - Jackson had arrived with his force, accompanied by SWAT teams and, unless she was much mistaken, one of the military units. It definitely looked like a tank there in the back. “Good work, Ramirez, really good work.”

“Thank you, Sir,” she said and looked at her handiwork all around, and couldn’t help a little pride at her CO’s tone of voice.

“All of them are Bane’s men?” he asked.

“Some. Some just thought they could take advantage of the situation, you know? Same for those in the truck. Loads of weapons in those apartments, Sir. So we brought them all in.”

“Good work, good work,” he repeated. “We’ll need this kind of resolution when we’re going to deal with Old Town.”

“Yes, Sir,” she agreed. Old Town. The worst of the lot. And, according to their intel, where most of Bane’s men found refuge. 

“You know your way around there, don’t you, Ramirez?”

“I know it pretty well. Haven’t been there in over eight years, though, Sir,” she admitted. 

“We’ll still need you. Let’s see if we can - ”

“Sir!” It was Davidson. And behind him -

“Well, well, well,” Jackson said as they both recognised the man. “Commissioner.”

Anna and Jim Gordon looked at each other in silence for just one moment. They were both, she knew, thinking of the same thing. That night, more than eight years ago. And one phone call.

The years had not been kind to Gordon. His hair was greyer, his demeanour subdued, his anger harder to control. And the years had not been kind to her memory of Jim Gordon, either. She thought she would feel guilty, looking at his face. When she looked at him, she knew he still lived that night. His wife had left him since, she heard, took the children and escaped Gotham, never to return. But Gordon was stupid enough to stay. Stupid enough to pretend Dent had been a hero.

She couldn’t help but smile. She smiled at the man’s presumption as much as she did at the irony. Harvey Dent Day. The Dent act. The Batman who took the fall, and now was blown to smithereens all over the Bay. Now everyone knew who Dent was. Now everyone was in with Bane and his like. All for nothing. She could feel her smile curling, expressing the disdain she felt.

Gordon wasn’t looking at her, though. He might not have even recognised her. Instead, he was already off, shouting at Jackson. “What is the meaning of this?” he gestured at the people on the ground, at the bodies, at the trucks. “These are citizens of Gotham, what do you think you’re doing?!”

“Ramirez,” Jackson was smiling as well, in on their little joke, and Gordon was staring, confused, at the two of them. Don’t worry, Commissioner, she thought and her smiled widened. Soon you will know. “I believe you wanted the honour?”

“Yes, Sir.” She faced Gordon now. “Commissioner James Gordon, you are under arrest on suspicion of treason and collaboration. I believe you know your rights?”

Gordon just gaped at her. “Under - ?” he managed after a few moments.

“Someone is going to need to take responsibility for this,” she said shortly. “And, last we checked, you were the man in charge. Cuff him,” she told Davidson. Gordon was so shocked that he did not even object. “Keep him under guard, Davidson, he’s your responsibility. We need to go into Old Town.”


	2. Chapter 2

Something outside changed. She could feel it - the hairs standing on edge at the back of her neck. Or maybe it was the silence that fell outside. Something was coming. 

The flames hadn’t reached that part of Old Town yet. Some part of Selina was disappointed - she hoped to see this place burn. She should never have come back.

No time for sentimentality; no time for memories, for thinking about his lips on hers and the look on his face and the way he just stood there, smiling at her after five whole months, as if nothing had happened. None of that. She should pack up and leave - _now_.

The news had already reached her ears. They weren’t letting anyone leave the city. She’d missed her chance. She should have left when she had that stupid bike at her disposal and the road was clear and he didn’t expect her to come back. 

She should have left before she had the chance to see him blowing himself up to Kingdom Come. 

Packing was useless now. She’d never get out. But she packed anyway. Just in case, she thought. Just in case. Always be ready.

“Selina.” She jumped at the voice, the knife already in her hand, advancing at the man behind her. But it was only Blake. She breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Don’t _do_ that,” she scolded him, then went back to packing. 

“You need to get out of here.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?”

“No, I mean _now_.” There was an urgency in his voice. Alarm. Fear? She turned around again. Anger in his eyes, but that wasn’t surprising. She got used to seeing the anger in his eyes. 

“What is it?”

“You’re on their list. You’re one of the targets.”

“Bane’s people? Bane’s people are a joke, he’s gone, they don’t have any - ”

“The police. The army. The National Guard. They’re all here, and you’re on the top of their list.” He paused. “They know what you did.”

“What, save the city, work against Bane, that sort of thing?”

“They know you worked for Bane.”

“I didn’t work for him,” the words came out all angry and sharp, before she had the chance to stop them. “I survived in this place for five months, I’m not some fancy cop, and yeah, he left me alone and I left him alone but I did not _work_ for him.”

“I’m not talking about that.” He looked almost apologetic. “I’m talking about before.”

Before...

“They know you turned... _him_ over to Bane.”

She didn’t have any clever retort for that.

“They know taking out... the Batman,” he settled in the end, “was the last thing Bane needed to do before he could take over the city. They’re calling it treason.”

Outside, the calls and noise of the rioters changed. Now there was gunfire and screams and something that sounded like a cannon, and it was getting closer.

“You need to get out of here, right now. You can’t be caught.”

For just a moment, panic settled in. She could always take care of herself, could always come up with the next move, the next target, the next plan. She always _knew what to do_. But now there were the riots and the army and the fight earlier today and she was exhausted and above all the explosion, far in the bay, and she couldn’t let herself think about that, about him, and it was all her fault. “Where am I going to go?” The words escaped her in a whisper. Blake didn’t answer.

It was the look on Blake’s face that snapped her back into her senses. She didn’t need anyone’s pity, especially not some stupid cop who didn’t know anything about the world. 

“They must have already gone through the dockland apartments,” she said. “I’ll go there, they won’t go looking there a second time, not if they’re trying to take over Old Town. I think the guys here can keep them busy for a while, don’t you?” 

She could see from his expression that he wasn’t buying her smile, just like he could see through her airy attitude, but she didn’t care. Survival first. The rest later. 

She sneaked out under the cover of the fighting. It was easier for her than most of the poor souls who were trying to escape what had become a war zone - she took the rooftops, climbed through windows and fire escapes, far away from the fight. 

She almost made it out of Old Town before her luck had run out. In the end, she wasn’t the only one to figure out that the rooftops were safer than the streets and, three blocks before the point where Old Town met Grand, she saw them. 

She recognised them immediately - Bane’s men. And they recognised her. And by now, they knew whose side she was on in the end. 

The irony, she couldn’t help but think and smile, even though there was nothing funny in the situation. Five months she kept her head down and her loyalties only to herself. Five months she kept clean, and Bane kept his word and left her alone. Right at the end she picked a side, and now that the fight was over, that choice was going to cost her her life.

“What’s up, boys?” she asked, the knife already in her hand. 

The fight ended faster than she thought. To her surprise, she was still standing by the end of it. 

She looked around. She remembered cutting the first man’s face, the man who was now crawling and bleeding on the roof; she remembered kicking down the second man, the one with the broken lower back who was doubled up, unable to move. But the third... she could have sworn she never even got the chance to touch him. But he was gone. 

She stood frozen in place, all of her senses on alert. For just a moment, she thought she caught a whiff of sea salt, of fresh air from the bay, even though Old Town was so far into the city that the sea breeze never made it there. And then the moment was gone.

She had no time to worry about a disappearing thug, no time to daydream of sea breeze. The soldiers down below noticed the movement or heard the noise, she wasn’t sure which, but she could see from the commotion that they spotted something was going on. She had three blocks yet until she was at Grand and free, and she had to move right now, or all was lost.

It took her five more hours to evade the blockades and the soldiers and reach the docklands neighbourhoods. A ghost town. 

The police - army? National Guard? All of them? - weren’t kind to the neighbourhood. Half of the people had been arrested, she could see, whole families dragged out of their homes. And the homes themselves - she could see the apartments through the lit windows. Broken furniture, whatever little there was of it; documents and clothes spread around. Babies crying and people shouting still. And so many windows where no light could be seen.

She picked one of those places. Abandoned, searched, half destroyed, but there was no way of knowing whether the owners were in one of the military trucks, or perhaps they had already moved out by then, left this forsaken place at some point during the last five months to a better neighbourhood. Did it matter? She didn’t know anymore. All she knew was that for tonight, she had a bed, somewhere to collapse and rid herself of the day. Of the last five months.

Sleep didn’t come. She closed her eyes in the darkness but all she could see was his face. His smile. _I admit I was a little let down_ , he said, and so light-hearted, as if it was only a small favour he had asked of her and she didn’t deliver. No sign of the betrayal in his eyes, the surprise when he looked at her that night when she led him to Bane, knowing there was no escape for him.

She sat up abruptly in bed, darkness all around her. There it was again. That feeling, that prick at the back of her neck. The knife that was never too far was already in her hand. And a whiff, a whiff of sea salt...

“Ms Kyle?”

She knew that voice. She didn’t know where from, but she knew that voice. She said nothing, got up as quietly as she could from the bed. The old man was smiling when he aimed his flashlight directly at her.

It came to her then. She knew who he was now, even though she couldn’t remember his name. “You’re the butler,” she said.

He nodded. “There are rumours,” he said quietly, “they say...”

“He took the bomb. He saved the city.”

More than a butler, she realised then as she saw him sitting down, dumbfounded, broken.

“I’m sorry,” she offered and he looked at her sharply. She wondered how much did he know.

“I wasn’t here,” he said after a while - after he could control his voice again, she suspected. 

“Some time you chose to take a vacation.” The butler said nothing. “I think he was glad. That you weren’t here.” Nonsense, of course - she hadn’t even considered the butler until he showed up and had no clue what Bruce Wayne thought of the man. But tonight she felt charitable, at least towards friends of Wayne. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to go through this, like the rest of us.”

“Well, Ms Kyle,” the butler got up. “I should leave now.”

Stay, the word lingered uninvited on the tip of her tongue. Let’s talk about him some more. I want to hear your stories. But she just gave him her most charming smile and said, “I’ll be seeing you around.”

He looked right through her smile and her charm, then nodded and said, “Good night.”

Through the glassless window, she watched him leave, a lone figure walking quietly in the abandoned street and into the darkness. Soon he was lost to the dark - much like his master, she thought with a pang and turned her gaze up. Her eyes met the dark shadow of Wayne Tower. Outside of her window, everything went still and calm. It was that hour of the night. And a whiff, a whiff of sea breeze and dampness here, so close to the docks, to the bay.

“Good night, Mr Wayne,” she whispered, and a small smile full of melancholy came to her lips despite herself. It was that kind of day, she thought. A day for stupid sentimentality. But the day was over. 

She went back to bed. Tomorrow she would start afresh. Clean slate.


	3. Chapter 3

For the first time in five months, Lucius Fox woke up in his own bed.

Not _exactly_ his own bed - his old house was in the no-man’s-land zone, back in the area of the city that was one of the first to be captured by Bane, followed swiftly by the citizens of Gotham. But he always kept a bed in Wayne Enterprises for those long nights, and that was where he slept that night and where he woke up that morning. 

He hesitated a moment, then looked out of the window. Wayne Tower was the best observation point in the entire city, and its central location and height allowed Fox a clear view of Gotham City - or, at least, of what was left of Gotham City.

The east side looked completely deserted. To the west Old Town, all the way up to Grand, and it was still burning, although the fires that burned red and yellow yesterday were only smoke now. The financial district and city hall looked like a military camp - they probably were, he thought. Further west, the bridges to the mainland already had crews on them, working tirelessly to open up the routes - at least in one direction, Lucius thought as he saw the tanks and trucks waiting in front of the broken bridge. And over there, over the bay...

He averted his gaze from the window and walked instead to his computer. To his surprise, the damn thing still worked. Five months, camps and refugees and hell on earth, and his office in Wayne Tower was left untouched. The generators stayed operational, his desk remained undisturbed, and finding a way to access the internet was much easier than he thought it would be.

Gotham, of course, was at the centre of all the news, but Lucius was more interested in information about the outside world. He read the news, and as he read more and more of what was going on outside, his brow furrowed and his excitement was replaced with doubt. They couldn’t possibly be serious...

“I see you heard, then.” 

Lucius paused, froze just a moment before he raised his eyes. 

Alfred Pennyworth had obviously not spent the past few months in Gotham. He looked too tidy, too... clean, Lucius decided as he caught a glimpse of his own jacket, in dire need of washing. Or maybe, now that he had access to new clothes, he should simply throw it away...

Lucius stopped that train of thought. His mind was wandering. He knew why, of course, but Lucius Fox was never a man to shy away from responsibility. 

“What are we going to do about it?”

For a moment Alfred looked angry, and Lucius knew exactly what was going through the man’s head. _We?_ But then he nodded. “I figure we’d go to the governor and try to explain Jim’s situation,” he said. “I could do it, but I figured, since you were here all this time...”

“I’ll come with you,” Lucius said immediately, then looked again at his jacket. “Perhaps I should change clothes first, though.”

“No.” Lucius raised an eyebrow. Alfred’s voice was harsher than Lucius could ever recall. “Better remind them you’ve been here all that time, that you know what you’re talking about.”

“And that we weren’t sitting on our asses waiting for the army to save us. You have a point.”

Alfred held his gaze for just a moment too long, and then Lucius grabbed his jacket and they went out to the street.

Outside Wayne Tower, the city felt almost abandoned. Lucius had lived in Gotham City his entire life, but he could never remember it being this quiet, this eerily silent. The sun’s rays sparkled on the fresh layer of snow, and Lucius felt as if he was walking inside a fairytale street rather than downtown Gotham. 

The fairytale, of course, didn’t last long. Three blocks from Wayne tower and already the snow had become a filthy mess, more brown than white and in various stages of melting. The smoke from the night’s riots encroached on them, together with piles of rubbish and the sound of shouting. Another two blocks, and they ran into their first military checkpoint. 

Lucius started patting his pockets in vain, hoping to find some sort of identification. The rows of people who were forced at gunpoint to kneel on the ground alarmed him - they couldn’t possibly have all belonged to the rioters of the night before. And he didn’t at all fancy joining them. It would be some feat, to have stayed out of harm’s way until now only to be arrested by the military, he thought as he realised he had no official document on him, nothing to prove he was the CEO of the most important company in the city.

Alfred saved the day. Of course he did, Lucius thought and shook his head in amazement as the old butler took out an official looking document and showed it to the soldier. A quick radio chat with an unknown person on the other side - the officer who issued the document, most likely - and the soldier let them pass without further comment.

“I entered the city with the National Guard,” Alfred explained, undoubtedly prompted by Lucius stunned face. “Had to make sure I wasn’t going to be arrested by the rest of the forces.”

“No wonder he was always so prepared, with you at his side,” Lucius said without thinking. Only when he met Alfred’s harsh expression did he realise what he had said. He didn’t get the chance to say anything more, though - they immediately ran into a second military checkpoint. 

After the second came the third, then the fourth and the fifth - every two or three blocks there was another road block, another checkpoint, more soldiers or police or special agents, who knew from which agency. At each point they could see them, Bane’s men or citizens of Gotham - or both - sitting on the road, their arms above their heads, some blindfolded, some tied up, some just sitting there in boredom, all at the mercy of the soldiers’ boredom or anger or apathy. 

It wasn’t just the numbers - the closer they got to the makeshift military camp and to their goal, the harder it became to go on. They had to wait longer at each checkpoint; the soldiers were more and more rude, and by the seventh or eighth checkpoint, Alfred had to demand to speak with their commanding officer before someone checked the authenticity of their papers.

Two blocks from the main camp, their journey ended. That makeshift road block was made of burnt cars and pieces of concrete; the walls in the buildings around them were full of bullet holes; and on the road, even the children were bound and blindfolded. Lucius shot Alfred a look, and prepared himself for another tough crossing, but that never came. After thirty minutes of idle waiting, he lost his patience and started shouting on the ill tempered, rude young soldier. Before Alfred could say a word, the man - boy, really, Lucius had to admit afterwards - ripped their precious document in two, and ordered them to ‘go back where they came from’. Lucius’s attempt to argue that ‘where they came from’ would last all of two blocks before they got stuck in another checkpoint did not impress the soldier.

“Was that really necessary?” Alfred asked when they were both sitting on the road, two feet from the checkpoint, their throats sore from shouting and the air of defeat falling all around them.

It was perhaps that feeling of defeat that caused Lucius to snap. “Don’t start,” he said.

“I’m just saying - ”

“You weren’t here for five months. I’ve had enough of kids with guns.”

“Well, this is so much better, isn’t it?”

“They weren’t going to let us through anyway.”

“You don’t know that. You’re just being irresponsible, you’ve always been irresponsible, just like when - ” Alfred stopped abruptly. He didn’t have to finish that sentence - Lucius knew what was on his mind. Automatically, he looked around, checking that no one was listening, that no one had realised what - _who_ \- they were talking about, then caught himself. Did it really matter anymore if people knew the identity of the Batman?

Yes, he thought. There could still be repercussions. For Alfred - and for Lucius himself. They all liked the Batman now, but once the dust settled - well. Just look at Jim Gordon. And they failed to help him, too.

No, Lucius realised all of a sudden. He wasn’t going to let Jim pay the price. He got up, dusted his jacket - lost cause, but it made him feel better - and marched back to the soldier. 

Fifteen minutes of arguing later, and he got an interview with the boy’s commanding officer. Lucius recognised her - “Ramirez, isn’t it?” he asked. She didn’t answer, just listened to their pleas stone-faced. But maybe there was some sympathy for them hidden inside that stoney expression after all, or guilt, because fifteen minutes after that they were in a military jeep, escorted to see the temporary new head of the Gotham Police. Even Alfred looked mildly impressed.

But even all of Lucius’ determination couldn’t help them once they made it face to face with the police.

“Out of the question.” The temporary Commissioner was a big man, well nourished, a man who looked grumpy at being forced to sleep outside of his bed for one night. He was nothing like the rest of them - those who spent five months running for their lives, or locked underground, or hiding from Bane’s goons. 

Still, Lucius breathed deep, counted to ten, then tried again. “If you would just let me explain the role Jim Gordon played in defeating Bane, I would - ”

“Doesn’t matter what he did.” The man took another sip from his coffee. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what _is_ this about?” Alfred asked. Had the man known Alfred half as well as Lucius did, he would have been on edge at his tone. But he didn’t, so he just looked at the man dismissively. 

“It’s about responsibility, Mr Pennyworth. Commissioner Gordon was the symbol of authority in Gotham - and he stood by and let a madman take over.”

“He didn’t _let_ him do anything,” Lucius snapped again, this time at a more appropriate target. “Bane had the whole city hostage. Jim Gordon had to run for his life - ”

“Ah, and that’s exactly it. He _ran_ , Gentlemen.”

“He tried to find a way to defeat Bane.”

“That wasn’t his mandate. That was up to the army, to the President. No. Jim Gordon was supposed to show the citizens of Gotham that law and order were still important in the city. He didn’t. He betrayed his position and he betrayed his rank and he betrayed the people of Gotham - and by doing that, he betrayed his country.”

“Standing up to them in broad daylight would have only gotten him killed! What good would that do? He served Gotham by trying to fight Bane! And he did a damn better job of it than you!”

“That’s enough, Mr Fox. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more urgent things to do. I will have someone take you back to Wayne Enterprises. Good day, gentlemen,” he said and left them. Through the open door, Lucius could see he had a new visitor - Foley’s wife. There would be no begging on behalf of Jim Gordon from her, Lucius thought darkly. 

He remained quiet all through the ride back to the Wayne Enterprises, and next to him, Alfred looked deep in thought. 

The building was still undisturbed. Lucius didn’t even have the energy to wonder why - how, in this city full of destruction and war, they were allowed to remain in the one island of tranquility. He just enjoyed the quiet. They walked inside, and all of a sudden Gotham City disappeared and all that was left was serenity. Serenity and exhaustion. Lucius wanted a warm meal, he wanted a hot shower, he wanted to crawl back into bed and wake up once the city started functioning again, once the men with the guns - whichever faction they belonged to - were gone, and he could go back to normal.

But crawling into bed was the last thing on Alfred’s mind. Lucius sighed and followed the man to the top floor, to Lucius’ office. He wasn’t surprised when Alfred reached for the secret button, the one that opened the bookcase to reveal a lift, a lift that would take them down to Applied Sciences.

“If they’re not going to release Jim Gordon,” Alfred pointed out, “we’re going to have to do it ourselves. If... _the Batman_ ,” he hesitated, then continued, “is gone, then it’s up to us to do what’s right. I hope you have some toys there we can use, Lucius.”

It took them a while to dig up those ‘toys’, as Alfred called them, out of Applied Science. The entire place was a mess - Bane’s people had left no stone unturned. But Lucius was relieved to discover that Bane’s men had shown very little interest in most of the department - only the Tumblers and the weapons had interested them, it seemed. Grapple hooks, EMP generators, a whole roll of memory cloths... Lucius and Alfred started picking up those things they might need.

And then Alfred paused. “What is it?” Lucius started asking, but Alfred hissed at him. And now Lucius could see it. Something was moving, right at the corner of his eye... One of Bane’s men, who had found refuge in Applied Sciences? Cops who found their way into the department through the tunnels? Alfred picked up a grapple gun and advanced forward. Lucius, for lack of a better weapon, grabbed a long, light metal rod. He doubted it would do much good if he had to beat someone up with it, but perhaps he could use it as a spear.

But no need - it was just a cat. They came prepared for a fight, but the damned thing meowed at them and tried to rub its head on Lucius’ leg. 

“Shoo,” he told the cat off, while Alfred laughed. The cat glared at him, and jumped on one of the tables. “I wonder how it got in,” Lucius told Alfred, but Alfred was no longer listening. He was examining a stain, thick red liquid on the floor where the cat had been - blood. It was moist, almost dry. A day old, perhaps two. 

“Maybe it’s the cat,” Lucius suggested.

“Maybe. Or whoever let the cat in,” Alfred said, but there was no sign of another living soul in the building, just Lucius and Alfred and the cat, so they went back to work.


	4. Chapter 4

As night fell, the riots started again. Jen wasn’t going to participate, not at first, anyway; she was just looking for shelter as the temperatures dropped and the army was more concerned with delivering food to the posh people than to the ones who escaped Old Town. 

She had managed to escape Old Town just in time. What, did they think she was going to sit there and wait for them? She might not have Selina’s skills, but she did learn _something_ from her partner.

For just a moment, she wondered whether Selina was still alive, whether the bastards arrested her or maybe shot her on the spot - or maybe some of Bane’s men did that. There were rumours all through the tunnels - that Selina was wanted for selling out the Batman, that Selina worked _with_ the Batman, that Selina had been executed by the army or blown up with the Batman or held up in one of the check points. Jen knew better - Selina was probably playing everyone; Selina was only ever on Selina’s side.

But now everyone was looking for her and Jen had been left on her own so she had to take care of herself, didn’t she? That was the first thing Selina had taught her. You first. And here she had soup and fire and a shelter from the snow, but now they were getting up to fight the cops and the army and the National Guard and they _made sense_. 

They were the prisoners here, they were the victims, they were the ones who had to live five months under Bane and his terrorists, why were they treated like criminals? Why were they the enemy? 

She recognised the speaker, the man who was standing on an overturned wooden box and shouting at them that they should fight the cops because the cops didn’t give a damn what happened to them. He was one of the prisoners, one of the men who were released by Bane from Blackgate. One of those who chose to join Bane - but then, he was just playing the odds, wasn’t he? He just did what he needed to survive, like her. Like Selina.

Maybe Selina really did sell the Batman to Bane. But if she did, she did it because she had to survive. “That’s right!” Jen shouted, slightly distracted, together with the crowd. Now they pulled a box full of guns and started handing them around.

They were going to reclaim Old Town, and she was going to join. Her home was in Old Town, wasn’t it? She deserved to have her tiny apartment back. She needed a place to live, and these tunnels were definitely not it. 

They ran out of guns before they got to her. She felt a mild pang of annoyance, but then let it go. She didn’t need a gun. She’d just get shot if she carried a gun. She was safe within the crowd. 

They got out of the tunnels and marched up Grand towards Old Town. Up in the front, the guys with the guns had lit up torches, then started cat-calling the National Guard. She could hear the cops saying _something_ through the bullhorn, but she couldn’t make out any words. It didn’t matter, really. They were simply taking back what was already theirs. The cops had no legal reason to interfere. 

She didn’t know who started shooting first, the cops or them. But the bullhorn stopped once the gunfire started.

Next to her, someone picked up a stone, gave it to her, then picked up another. She was glad to take it. Just for protection. Just in case. She never got to throw it - by the time she was close enough to the cops, they were already jumping all over her, forcing the stone out of her hand, beating her with the back of their guns, with the nightstick, and then she blacked out.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been out - couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, she thought as the cop pushed her into the back of the van.

“Hey, hey, hey!” someone shouted next to her. “She’s hurt, be careful!”

The cop’s response was to push her even more roughly into the van. The guy next to her started swearing, tried to push back, and the cop just pulled out his nightstick. Jen grabbed the guy’s hand and forced him to sit down on the bench, before the cop could start beating him up, and the cop just smirked.

As he moved away, Jen could see the leader of the riot, the ex-prisoner from Blackgate, lying on the floor, his eyes open but unblinking. There was a bullet hole in his forehead, right between the eyes - sniper, not beat cops, she thought. The door of the van slammed shut. The van started moving.

They sat there, quietly, some fifteen or twenty of them, in a space that was meant for perhaps five. She felt nausea - maybe it was the lack of oxygen, too many people, or perhaps she had a concussion. She’d ask for a doctor once they got to their destination. Probably a police station. What an idiot she was, she thought bitterly, getting herself arrested. What would Selina have said? 

But Selina was gone. Probably gunned down with a bullet between her eyes, just like the ex-prisoner, and Jen was on her own. All she wanted was her home back. All she wanted was to survive, now they were arresting her for it.

The van was going slowly. They couldn’t see the street outside, but they could hear the voices, the shouts - the riot was still going strong. And then - an explosion. Fifteen people jumped at the same moment, together with the van. It was close, very close, and for just a second, one terrible second, Jen thought it was the bomb, that the Batman didn’t blow it up after all and it was going off right there and then in the middle of the city and that they were all going to die.

But soon afterwards, the van started moving again and they could hear the shouts outside, the sounds of the riot turning into screams of terror. The van sped up.

There were no more incidents until they arrived at the police station, no more bombs or rioters or snipers. The van stopped, right at the headquarters of the National Guard - or was it the army? - and they were unloaded unceremoniously and told to sit on the floor. “I think I have a concussion,” she tried telling the cop who pulled her down but he ignored her and just shouted at her to put her hands on her head and shut the fuck up. She did as she was told. She sat there quietly, between the guy who shouted at the cop and was bleeding from his arm but still forced to keep it up, and a kid who couldn’t be older than fourteen who was crying silently beside her. She closed her eyes, willing the headache away, and waited. They’d get to her eventually.

Eventually turned out to be five hours. They were sitting there, on the cold tar, hands on head, for five long hours, until she started throwing up and only then did a doctor show up and the cops pulled her away from the crowd.

“What’s your name?” the doctor asked. He was flashing a penlight at her. She tried to follow but it just gave her a headache.

“Jen.”

“Full name.”

“Jennifer Holly Robinson.”

“Address?”

“What?”

“What’s your address?”

“You’re kidding me.” Who had an address in Gotham anymore? But the doctor insisted, so she gave him her old Old Town address, the apartment she had shared with Selina months and months ago. 

The doctor nodded and started asking her about headaches and nausea and dizziness until she was about to throw up on him, and finally he let her lie down on the camp bed and told her to stay where she was. It took her a few moments to notice the bastard handcuffed her to the bed, too. She closed her eyes, for just a moment, and started to think of what she’d tell him once he got back. 

“Hey, you, wake up!” 

She opened her eyes lazily. It was the doctor - but he had someone with him. A soldier. _Now_ what did they want?

“You’re Jennifer Holly Robinson.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Anna Ramirez. I’m with the National Guard. Do you have any ID?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she started shouting, but the doctor forced her back down and told her sternly that she should calm down. I’ll give you ‘calm down’, she thought, but the soldier started talking again.

“That address you’ve given us - ”

“Yeah?”

“We have it down as the address of one Selina Kyle.”

Shit. 

“I’m not Selina,” she said immediately - perhaps too quickly, judging by the looks on the soldier’s face. “I’m her roommate,” she added. “ _Was_ her roommate.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Months ago.” It was true, technically. Selina had gone back to Old Town even as Bane was still in control of the city. She didn’t feel comfortable living in other people’s homes, she said. Jen had the feeling she was feeling guilty. Whether she felt guilty for the rich bastards who lost their homes or for that psycho who dressed up as a bat, Jen wasn’t sure, and she never dared asking.

“Do you know where she is?”

Dead, probably, Jen wanted to say, then paused.

It could be her ticket out. Wasn’t that what Selina had always said? You first.

“She wouldn’t go back to Old Town,” Jen said finally. “She’s not dumb. She’ll know you’re after her by now. She’ll go somewhere you’ve already cleared. Somewhere you think is empty.”

Ramirez looked at the doctor, then nodded and started walking away.

“Hey!” Jen called after her. Ramirez turned back. “She wasn’t working for Bane. No matter what you heard. She just needed to get them off her back.”

Ramirez shrugged and walked away. Jen hoped beyond hope that Selina had enough sense to get out of the city when she had the chance. 

She couldn’t spend too much time feeling sorry for Selina, though; first, Selina would have told her she was being an idiot had she known, and second, it seemed that telling them about Selina did the trick. She was still handcuffed, but now they moved her to a gurney and maybe they were going to put her on an ambulance and drive her to a hospital, out of the army’s reach and far from the police headquarters.

But that would be later. For now, she was still made to wait in the hall - where an extremely loud and obnoxious cop was shouting at the new staff about Jim Gordon and how they couldn’t lock him up. Had she not been sure she would throw up as soon as she opened her mouth, she would have started shouting as well and told the cop exactly what she thought of Jim Gordon and that he should shut up because her head was simply killing her.

“Give it up, Blake,” the other cop finally did her a favour and told the obnoxious cop to keep it to himself and give the rest of them some peace. “You wanna tell Foley’s widow that Gordon’s blameless? He would still be alive if it weren’t for Gordon’s antics.”

“No, he came to join everyone else, he came because of the Batman, he came to fight them off, which is - ”

“Keep it down, Blake, doctor said she shouldn’t be disturbed.”

Blake kicked the wall hard, then contorted his face in pain. Jen rolled her eyes, but it gave her an even worse headache, so she closed them instead.

“Just let me talk to him,” she could hear Blake again through the fog. “Just five minutes.”

“No one’s allowed to speak to him. Governor’s orders. Besides, they’re moving him tomorrow to Washington. The FBI’s taking over.”

“You cannot blame the Commissioner for this.”

“Give it up, Blake. Out of our hands.”

She opened her eyes again when they were rolling her down the hall - into a cell or the infirmary, she wasn’t sure. She thought for a moment she saw him - Commissioner Gordon - sitting alone in a cell. Or maybe it was someone else. She never much bothered with what policemen looked like, even the important ones. Especially the important ones. Beat cops, those were the ones she needed to recognise on sight. The Police Commissioner was never her concern. 

Probably wasn’t him anyway, she mused, and closed her eyes, finally falling asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

The third morgue was to be the last one. She finally found the body. “Yes, that’s him,” Sarah Foley told the coroner. 

She looked at Peter one last time, and then the coroner covered the body. She already knew - of course she knew. Even before they called her, she knew. He wouldn’t have been arrested and he never came back home. But still, that was procedure, so they called her to identify the body and she came because that was procedure and because those two nice airmen - polite, indifferent - had insisted on escorting her to the morgue. 

Decent people didn’t go out of their houses unless they had no choice. 

“I’ll have the airmen escort you back home,” the coroner said shortly, and that was it. Procedure. Except that there was no procedure to how they were going to get food, the electricity had been unreliable for the past two days, and all she wanted to do was pack a suitcase and get the hell out of the city - she and twelve million other people, that is. 

The airforce had sent packs of flyers from above, one of the times the electricity was down and there was no television or radio and the phones were dead. No one was to leave the city, not until they finished opening the roads. Except no one was working on the roads - they were too busy fighting the riots and trying to find the last of Bane’s men. 

The car took her all the way from the financial district and into her nice suburban neighbourhood. There were still some fights going on near their headquarters, but the further away they got, the less people there were on the street. These were the suburbs, after all. Paint was peeling and the snow the piling over the autumn leaves and no one had tended to the gardens in five months, but these were still the suburbs, these were the houses and families, full of people like her and Peter and the kids, who just tried to survive for five months. They were not rich enough to be dragged out by the mob and into the courts; not important enough to be sought out by Bane’s men. They just tried to go on with their lives. And then Jim Gordon had to show up in the last minute and take Peter away on a fool’s war. 

The airmen - polite, indifferent - stopped the car in front of the house that was hers and Peter’s and the kids’, and now only hers and the kids’. “There you are, Ma’am,” he said.

“When are they going to re-open the stores?” she asked. “We’re running out of food.”

“I don’t know, Ma’am. I’m sure they’ll announce it on the news.”

“Thank you,” she said - thanks for nothing, but it wasn’t the soldier’s fault, he was barely more than a boy, and he was just following orders. She got out the car. 

She thought for a moment to go over to Emily’s, see whether she had heard something during the hours Sarah spent in the morgue, but the airmen were watching - politely, indifferently - from the car, and she got the hint. Go home. She got inside.

The day was growing darker, but there was no light in the corridor. Two candles were lit in the living room - and the television was off. No electricity again. She would have to get more candles, Sarah noted automatically in the mental list she kept in her head. Candles and sugar and more pasta and maybe they finally would bring in chocolate like they promised. She wished she had something to give the kids.

She looked out the window. The Airforce car had already gone. They weren’t going to stick around here, now, were they? They had more important things to do - chase Bane’s men and arrest bastards like Jim Gordon, and stop the riots and open the roads. She wondered if she could get some gasoline for the car, and when they finally opened the roads she could pack up the kids and go to her parents in Detroit. She hadn’t talked to her mother in five months.

With this idea in her mind, she got out of the house again and walked over to Emily’s. Emily used lived with Ted who was a fireman and was mistaken for a cop and executed by Bane’s goons four months ago. Ever since, Emily had been on her own, except when Sarah or the Johnsons dropped by, or when her good-for-nothing brother Nate showed up with news and extra food and made sure the rest of the goons left their neighbourhood alone. Maybe he was good for _something_ , although by now he had probably been arrested by the National Guard. Maybe he had brought her some gasoline. 

There were no cars in the street, but Sarah still looked right and left before crossing. She was halfway across before she realised what she’d done. Old habits die hard. Her knuckles barely touched the door before it opened - Emily, apparently, had been watching the street just as closely as Sarah always did. She rushed inside and the door shut immediately behind her. Better no one saw her, but that was just the force of habit again, because she could not imagine who might see her and why would they care.

Emily’s brother, Nate, was sitting at the kitchen table. His arm was bleeding heavily. It looked like a gunshot wound. The first-aid kit was spread on the table in front of him, and he was fumbling with the iodine and bandages.

“What’s going on?” Sarah asked.

“Got shot by the cops,” he muttered and contorted his face in pain as the iodine touched the wounded flesh.

“That’ll teach you, marching down Old Town.”

“Wasn’t in Old Town. That’s from two days ago.” 

“Nate had to lie low until he was sure he could sneak in here without the police noticing him,” Emily explained. 

He was downtown two days ago. He could have been the one who pulled the trigger, the one who shot Peter. She half wanted to go outside and run until she found the police and bring them here, to arrest the bastard. 

And then reason took over. The last rays of sunshine had disappeared, and through the window she could see the street, cold and empty and dark. If she started running outside, she’d get shot, and then who’d take care of the kids? And besides, Nate might still be useful.

“Do you have any gasoline?” she asked. “I thought I could take the kids away, go to Detroit.”

“Gasoline?” Nate stared at her. 

“There’s nothing. We’re running out of candles,” Emily answered.

“Any way of getting some?”

“From _where_?”

“Your friends.”

“They’ve all been arrested, you stupid -” Nate had started shouting, then calmed himself down at the look from his sister. “There’s no one. We’re on our own.”

Well, she wuld just have to get by herself. “If you get anything, let me know,” she said and walked out, back to her house.

“Mom!” She heard her daughter as soon as she walked into the house.

“What is it, sweetie?”

“There’s a man in the kitchen.”

“There’s two men. Learn to count!”

“I know how to count, Mom, tell him!”

“You’re such a baby!”

“Stop it!” Sarah was surprised to hear herself shouting at them. She was tired, she was angry, she could still see Peter’s body, lying there in the morgue... “Just stop fighting,” she said again, this time in quiet despair.

The kids looked at each other, then spoke again, this time more tamely. “There’s two men in the kitchen.”

“Yes, thank you,” she muttered and walked into the kitchen. Probably the airmen again. She could tell them about Nate, maybe they would give her gasoline as a reward for turning him in and then...

The men in the kitchen weren’t the airmen. They weren’t the army or the National Guard or even the police. She only recognised one of them - Lucius Fox.

“What do you want?” she snapped at him. He had worked with Jim Gordon.

“Mrs Foley, we came to ask for you help,” Fox started. 

His friend clarified. “We thought, maybe if you talked to the army about Jim Gordon...”

“No.” She refused to let him finish the sentence.

“Mrs Foley...”

“No. Gordon deserves it. He should never have made them fight in the first place.”

Fox and the stranger looked at each other, then back at her. “They fought to save the city,” Fix said gently. She hated him all the more for his gentleness. “They fought to stop Bane. Peter died a hero.”

“He’s still dead,” she said. “And I have three kids to feed and no interest in seeing Jim Gordon escape trial.”

“Very well,” Fox got up. “My apologies for wasting your time. Although - Mrs Foley, perhaps you could do us a favour? We believe Jim gave something to your husband a few days ago.”

“Something?”

“A device. About this big - ” he showed her with his hands - “metallic -”

“And odd buttons,” the stranger added.

Yes, a device. She remembered now. In Jim Gordon’s insistence that there was a way to stop Bane’s bomb, he gave Peter this blasted thing. Sarah had thought he had only given it in the first place to force Foley into their plans. She would be better off without that thing in her house.

“Hold on, it should be under the sink,” she said. That was where Peter had hidden it - under the sink, behind the trash, and hopefully if Bane’s goons ever came visiting they wouldn’t think to look there. She fetched it and gave it to the men. The stranger looked at Fox questioningly, who nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s it. Thanks again, Mrs Foley. Our condolences about your husband.”

The two were gone, leaving her alone in the house with three kids and so many things to do. The house was a mess and she had to cook dinner somehow and try to get the kids to stop fighting and do something productive. They had given up the notion of homework a long time ago; she tried to teach them from last year’s textbooks but they had already read through them all and she had no idea what this year’s textbooks would have been and even if she had, she had no way of getting the books anyway. Maybe the kids would be willing to read a book. Unlikely, but worth a try.

Just in time, the light went on again, the buzz of electricity filled the house and the TV turned itself on. ‘Gotham’s citizens rejoice as the army marches into the city,’ the news claimed, and she hurried to the kitchen to throw some mac and cheese into the microwave. She put in some frozen peas as well but these were unlikely to be eaten, the kids hated anything that could even be mistaken for a vegetable and she had given up fighting with them over it a long time ago. 

“We’ll stop for a burger on the way to Detroit,” she promised them that night when they made faces at the meal. “Burgers and fries.” She was getting tired of it herself, she never liked it anyway but the relief forces didn’t much care that they were sick of eating the same thing over and over again. 

By the time the kids went to sleep the electricity was gone again, but not before the television informed them that the National Guard was knocking on doors and delivering groceries and that the gas stations were full of cars and that many families were finally reunited as concerned but relieved relatives of Gotham’s citizenry poured into the city. 

Sarah went back to the kitchen to clean the last of the dinner before turning in herself, and suddenly froze. She wasn’t alone. She could hear someone, breathing in the dark.

“Who is this?” she demanded. “I’m warning you, I’m armed!” She wasn’t, and it wouldn’t matter, not in the dark, where she was more likely to shoot herself than any intruder. But it couldn’t hurt to warn.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” she heard the answer. A woman’s voice. But she wasn’t frightened, the woman. She was just stating a fact, her voice assured and strong and almost like a purr. For some reason, it made Sarah even more afraid.

“What do you want?”

“We need to know where they’re keeping Commissioner Gordon,” it was a man’s voice now. He sounded familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“In prison. Where he should be.”

“Mrs Foley...”

“I know you,” she finally remembered. “You’re Blake, aren’t you.”

“Mrs Foley.” The woman again. “We need to know where he is.”

“Peter is dead because of him!” she wanted to scream, but she didn’t allow herself - the children would hear.

“No. He’s dead because of Bane,” Blake said. 

“Bane,” she spat the name. “And they needed the Batman to get rid of him.”

“Actually, I did that,” the woman said, sounding almost amused. Almost, because there was a note of sadness in her voice - a sadness she was controlling and holding back, much like the thought of Peter that Sarah had only allowed at the back of her brain because she had to think of dinner and the kids and tomorrow. 

Sarah sat down heavily on a chair. “He’s inside the building where Major Crimes used to be. Where the National Guard is now. You’ll never get in there.”

“We’ll see.”

Shuffling feet, movement, they were prepared to leave. “Blake,” she called after him.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have any gasoline? I thought I could take the kids to my mother in Detroit.”

“Not unless you’re willing to steal an army truck,” he answered. “And I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

More shuffling. “Thank you,” he called from where the door was. Sarah didn’t bother answering. Instead, she looked outside the window at the bridge, the same one on which she saw the huge bat sign burning only a few nights ago. There was fire again - not on the bridge but beyond, inside the city. The riots had started again. She laid her head on her hands and started crying in earnest.


	6. Chapter 6

It was a quarter to twelve and they finally gained entrance into the old Major Crimes building. Blake knew a way in, he was so excited to lead the way into the building that Selina didn’t have the heart to tell him she was already aware of it. She did stop him before he opened that window and checked the surroundings first herself. Between the two of them, she trusted her track record better than his.

The corridor was dark and empty. She jumped inside, landing softly on the floor. He jumped in after her, much heavier, much noisier, and she almost scolded him for not being careful enough. But the corridor was empty. No one came to see what the fuss was all about.

“Come on,” she whispered, and he followed.

By the third staircase she was starting to get nervous. They must have been there three or four minutes already, and there wasn’t a living soul in sight. Sure, most of the forces were out there, fighting the rioters again - she could hear the screams from here, the explosions every once in a while, this hellhole of a city in flames and bleeding like it had done the night before and the night before that. But she knew they would never leave the entire building unguarded.

They kept on going. They didn’t have much choice. They couldn’t go back. Not when Jim Gordon was being moved to Washington tomorrow. 

In all her life, Selina had never imagined she would break into a police station - and to rescue a cop, of all people. Wayne definitely was a bad influence on her, she thought. A smile came to her lips when she thought of him. 

No one in the third floor corridor, and that was where they were supposedly holding him. She beckoned Blake quietly and continued without a sound further in. The offices were empty; the interrogation rooms were empty; behind the door into the other section of the corridor, a cop was lying unconscious on the floor.

She froze; was this a trap or were they simply not the first? Did Bane’s men return for one last chance at revenge? Or was it one of Gordon’s lot? There was no sign of struggle or of gunshot on the cop’s face or his uniform. No hint who his attacker might have been.

She should have brought a gun, Selina scolded herself, but continued down the corridor anyway. They made it this far, they weren’t turning back. 

Blake touched her shoulder lightly, and she tensed. She heard it too - whoever it was, they were busy taking down even more cops. That must have been where all the cops were - busy fighting the intruders. It would have given Selina and Blake the perfect opportunity to spring Gordon out of his cell - if only his cell weren’t on the other side of the fight.

There were five cops, and he was just himself and fighting them one by one and all at the same time. Selina recognised the his unique fighting technique before she had a glimpse of his face and still she just stood there, looking at the practiced movements, brutal and efficient, if somewhat slower than usual, with just a hint of sluggishness. For the first time since she knew herself, her mind went blank.

“Are you going to stand there or are you going to help?” he asked as he smashed an elbow into a cop’s face. It wasn’t the low growl and it wasn’t his usual voice but something in between. His attire was in-between too - his face was visible, no mask to hide behind, but he was still clad in bits and pieces of the armour: the right arm still had spikes on it and parts of the breastplates survived, although these looked to be more of a hindrance now than use. The cape was long gone. The bits that were cloth looked stained, and she knew it was probably blood, not salt water. She saw it in his movement - slower and more sluggish than she remembered, a futile attempt to control the bleeding. She shook her head. No time for that.

She kicked one cop from behind, saw him go down like a sack of potatoes, but couldn’t take even a moment to admire her handiwork because his friend was already jumping towards her. One high kick, one low, and he was done and there was no more resistance. 

“You need help against only five guys?” she asked, careful to sound lighthearted and playful. “You’re losing it, Wayne.”

“I know how much you like to be a part of the action,” he answered, and again - not the guttural sounds he used under the mask, not his real voice, but a grunt in between. She jumped and caught his right side, Blake caught his left, and together they sat him down. There was something warm and dark between two of the surviving armour plates, where the knife found flesh. His hair had the scent of sea salt.

She wanted to help him out of the armour plates, but he stopped her. “Not now,” he said. “Not here.” He got up, nodded at her, nodded at Blake, and together the three of them stepped down the corridor.

Jim Gordon was sitting alert and worried in one cell. In the next she saw Jen - now what on earth was Jen doing in police custody, she couldn’t even begin guessing, but there she was. 

Gordon rose to his feet, his mouth gapes in surprise. “But what...?” was all he managed to say. Bruce didn’t stop for answers. Instead, he fished something out of the belt - that part of the suit had luckily survived - and aimed it at the door. 

“Step back,” he said, and all three of them did. 

The explosion was small and affected only the lock. The door opened and Jim Gordon rushed out. 

“Thank you,” he said. Bruce opened his mouth to say something, but then seemed to change his mind and simply shrugged. 

Selina, meanwhile, was picking the lock of Jen’s cell. “I can do that,” Bruce said, but she ignored him. If she knew anything, it was how to pick a lock. One, two - three. The door opened and she shook Jen awake.

Her friend’s eyes were unfocused when she first opened them and just stared at Selina. “S’you,” she said finally. “They were looking for you.”

“I know. We’re out of here. Come on, on your feet,” she pulled Jen up, and half carried her, half dragged her out of the cell. They could already hear footsteps coming up the corridor.

“Let’s go,” Bruce said. Selina dragged Jen towards the window and hoped Bruce came prepared with a vehicle large enough. Blake climbed out before her, helped Jen out, and Selina shot one last look at the police station and climbed out herself. 

The room was left empty for almost five full seconds. When the door opened, Alfred Pennyworth and Lucius Fox had a good look at the room - the unconscious policemen, the empty cells, and mostly, no sign of Commissioner Gordon. 

“Not the first, then,” Alfred said dryly.

***

It took Selina almost two hours to get Bruce out of the remains of the suit. He told her it would have been much faster were the thing still intact, but some of the plates were broken at just the wrong place, some of the pieces were bent and some had fused into each other, and in addition to all that, she had to work around his wounds. He said nothing, of course, and almost managed to hide the pain, except when she accidentally touched the knife wound in his side and he smashed his fist on the table and bit his lip until there was blood.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No, you’re not,” he retorted instantly, but there was a sparkle in his eye. She wiped the blood from his lip before returning to the suit. 

“Your scars have scars,” she commented when she finally got him out of that thing. He rolled his eyes and looked for the needle in her first-aid kit. “I’ll do that.” She took the needle from him and started stitching the wound. He held tightly to the edge of the table and grunted in pain every once in a while. “You don’t say much,” she said when she finished with the needle and put a bandage on the wound.

“I was too busy trying not to scream,” he answered.

Selina got up and put the first-aid kit away. They were in the same hiding place she had used that first night, the apartment at the edge of the docks. They couldn’t see Old Town from here, couldn’t see downtown or the riots or the military camps. They couldn’t see Wayne Manor.

If Gordon had any brains, he would be off the island by now, she thought. Blake and Jen were also gone - he said he would take care of her, make sure she was alright and out of harm’s way and out of the police’s reach. Where he would go, Selina didn’t know.

She looked at her companion. He wasn’t half as intimidating without the suit, she had to admit, and even less so when he was swaying on his feet. She’d always liked the Batman but now she thought it was the concept of him she liked, and this man, he wasn’t a concept, he was real. But she liked him nonetheless. 

He was stubborn; he had to be, to survive in a city like Gotham, doing what he did, but she was impressed when he stubbornly stood up and walked in her direction. If he needed to hold on to her shoulder to remain standing up afterwards, well, she wasn’t going to comment about that.

“Nice view,” he said. A seagull went past the window and landed on the water. Beyond that there was just the dark horizon.

“I’m thinking of buying here,” she said. He didn’t answer. For just a moment, she actually considered it. Could she stay here, in this cursed city, in the city she had dreamt of leaving for years, if it meant staying with him? 

He took his hand off her shoulder and gently caressed her cheek. “Let’s run away,” he whispered.


End file.
